Rise of Rome

Roman civilization arose during the middle of the first millennium B.C. After the Romans gained independence from the ruling Etruscans in 509 B.C., they slowly established control over the Italian peninsula, the western Mediterranean, the whole Mediterranean basin, and large parts of Europe. Although Rome retained its republican form of government until the first century B.C., there was considerable political turmoil and struggle, often reflecting tensions between the lower and middle classes and the ruling elites. Eventually, the Republic was unable to support these and other tensions. After a century of "slow revolution," Augustus took command in 27 B.C., making Rome an empire in all but name. By the time the Republic was transformed into the Empire, the combination of Roman political control and Greek culture had provided considerable unity to the Mediterranean basin. This Greco-Roman civilization enjoyed full maturity following the triumph of Augustus.

The Republic's most stunning accomplishments were military, political, and administrative. Rome was in the long run consistently successful in its wars, each time extending its rule. One reason for this success was her ability to develop political, administrative, and legal policies to manage newly won territories-something at which the Greeks were much less successful. During the late Republic and particularly during the Empire, these accomplishments were facilitated and symbolized by great architectural achievements-the roads, aqueducts, public facilities, and monuments that helped hold Roman lands together. Culturally, the Romans borrowed freely from the Greeks, acknowledging Greek superiority but nevertheless adding their own style to what they borrowed.

This chapter deals with two main issues. First, what was the structure of the Roman state? This involves an examination of the Roman constitution. Second, what was the nature of Roman society during the Republic? To get at this issue, a number of documents focus on the life and education of the aristocracy, the importance of Roman religious practices, the position of women, the use of slaves, and the place of Greek culture in Roman life. The sources in this chapter should provide a background for developments during the Empire, which will be covered in the next chapter.

The Ancient City:

Religious Practices

Fustel de Coulanges

Ancient Rome is usually described in political, military, and cultural term. The Romans themselves are typically described as practical, rational, disciplined, and secular Yet like the Greeks, they were also very religious. This is emphasized in the following selection from The Ancient City, which has become a minor classic. Here Fustel de Coulanges, a nineteenth-century French historian, shows how central religious beliefs were to the Roman's everyday life.

Consider: How the Romans related to the gods; what the author means in arguing that the Roman patrician was a priest.

We must inquire what place religion occupied in the life of a Roman. His house was for him what a temple is for us. He finds there his worship and his gods. His fire is a god; the walls, the doors, the threshold are gods; the boundary marks which surround his field are also gods. The tomb is an altar, and his ancestors are divine beings.

Each one of his daily actions is a rite; his whole day belongs to his religion. Morning and evening he invokes his fire, his Penates,1 and his ancestors; in leaving and entering his house he addresses a prayer to them. Every meal is a religious act, which he shares with his domestic divinities. Birth, initiation, the taking of the toga, marriage, and the anniversaries of all these events, are the solemn acts of his worship.

He leaves his house, and can hardly take a step without meeting some sacred objecteither a chapel, or a place formerly struck by lightning, or a tomb; sometimes he must step back and pronounce a prayer; sometimes he must turn his eyes and cover his face, to avoid the sight of some ill-boding object.

Every day he sacrifices in his house, every month in his cury, several months a year with his gens or his tribe. Above all these gods, he must offer worship to those of the city. There are in Rome more gods than citizens.

He offers sacrifices to thank the gods; he offers them, and by far the greater number, to appease their wrath. One day he figures in a procession, dancing after a certain ancient rhythm, to the sound of the sacred flute. Another day he conducts chariots, in which lie statues of the divinities. Another time it is a lectisternium: a table is set in a street, and loaded with provisions; upon beds lie statues of the gods, and every Roman passes bowing, with a crown upon his head, and a branch of laurel in his hand.

There is a festival for seed-time, one for the harvest, and one for the pruning of the vines. Before corn has reached the ear, the Roman has offered more than ten sacrifices, and invoked some ten divinities for the success of his harvest. He has, above all, a multitude of festivals for the dead, because he is afraid of them.

He never leaves his own house without looking to see if any bird of bad augury appears. There are words which he dares not pronounce for his life. If he experiences some desire, he inscribes his wish upon a tablet which he places at the feet of the statue of a divinity.

At every moment he consults the gods, and wishes to know their will. He finds all his resolutions in the entrails of victims, in the flight of birds, in the warning of the lightning. The announcement of a shower of blood, or of an ox that has spoken, troubles him and makes him tremble. He will be tranquil only after an expiatory ceremony shall restore him to peace with the gods.

He steps out of his house always with the right foot first. He has his hair cut only during the full moon. He carries amulets upon his person. He covers the walls of his house with magic inscriptions against fire. He knows of formulas for avoiding sickness, and of others for curing it; but he must repeat them twenty-seven times, and spit in a certain fashion at each repetition.

He does not deliberate in the senate if the victims have not given favorable signs. He leaves the assembly of the people if he hears the cry of a mouse. He renounces the best laid plans if he perceives a bad presage, or if an ill-omened word has struck his ear. He is brave in battle, but on condition that the auspices assure him the victory.

This Roman whom we present here is not the man of the people, the feeble-minded man whom misery and ignorance have made superstitious. We are speaking of the patrician, the noble, powerful, and rich man. This patrician is, by turns, warrior, magistrate, consul, farmer, merchant; but everywhere and always he is a priest, and his thoughts are fixed upon the gods. Patriotism, love of glory, and love of gold, whatever power these may have over his soul, the fear of the gods still governs everything.

Life and Leisure:

The Roman Aristocrat

I P V D. Balsdon

Although it is appropriate to concentrate on the major events and the important accomplishments of the Romans, at times this leads one to forget that the Romans were real people with everyday lives. The religious aspects of their lives are brought out in the selection by Fustel de Coulanges.

In the following selection J. P V D. Balsdon of Oxford focuses on the occupations, alternatives, and patterns of life open to a typical Roman aristocrat.

Consider: The occupations most appropriate for a Roman aristocrat and the limitations he had to face; connections between this description and Cicero's life and education as revealed in the document by Cicero; any connections between this picture of Roman life and the image presented by Fustel de Coulanges.

By upper-class standards public service was the noblest activity of man-the life of the barrister, the soldier, the administrator and the politician; for normally the senator's life embraced all those four activities. Rhetoric was a main constituent of his education and at an early age he put his learning into practice by pleading at the Bar. He climbed the ladder of a senatorial career, absent from Rome sometimes for considerable periods in which he served as an army officer or governed a province. If he committed no indiscretion, he was a life-member of the Senate-if he held the consulship, an important elder statesman from then onwards. In the Empire he might be one of the Emperor's privy counsellors.

This was not a career in which, except in the last centuries of the Republic, great fortunes were to be made. The senator therefore needed to be a wealthy man, in particular to own considerable landed property. To this he escaped when he could, particularly if he came of a good family, for the Roman aristocrat was a countryman at heart, interested in farming well, happy in the saddle, fond of hunting. He would have been shocked by the parvenu Sallust's description of farming and hunting as "occupations fit for a slave"; and other Romans no doubt were shocked too, for in the case of the farmer (and perhaps only of the farmer) the notion of work had a wide romantic fascination. Everyone liked to be reminded of Cincinnatus in the fifth century B.C., of how, when they sent for him to be dictator, they found him ploughing and how, once the business of saving Rome as dictator was accomplished, he returned happily to his farm. When Scipio Africanus found himself driven from public life, he worked on the land with his own hands.

If an aristocrat's means were not sufficient to support him in a life of public service, he might turn to business, banking, trading, tax-farming, the activities of the "Equestrian order." In this way distinguished families sometimes disappeared from politics for a generation or more and then, their wealth restored, they returned. There was nothing disgraceful about being a business man, as long as you were rich and successful enough, in which case you were likely to invest largely in land and to become one of the landowning gentry. Equestrians, whether business men or rich country residents, were fathers of senators often and sometimes sons, frequently close personal friends, Atticus of Cicero for instance.

A man who avoided or deserted "the sweat and toil" of a public career in favour of industrious seclusion-"a shady life" (vita umbratilis)-could excuse himself and indeed (like Cicero and Sallust when, elbowed out of an influential position in public life, they became writers) found it desirable to excuse himself. If he became a writer, then he made it clear that he wrote as an educationalist, employing his seclusion to teach valuable lessons to his readers, particularly his young readers, a purpose which nobody disparaged. But if his retirement was the retirement of self-indulgence (desidia), like the later life of L. Lucullus, an obsession with fantastically expensive landscape gardening and extravagant fish ponds, he was a traitor to serious and responsible standards of living (gravitas) and won the contempt-however envious-of all but his like-minded friends. There was no secure happiness in such a life, as serious men like Lucretius, Horace and Seneca knew.

Roman Women

Gillian Clark

Until recently most historians presented an image of Roman life that mentioned women only in passing. This void about the experience of Roman women is being filled by new scholarship, much of it written by feminist historians. In the following selection Gillian Clark analyzes the position and experience Of women during the late Republic and age of Augustus, emphasizing the political, legal, and social restraints on women.

Consider: Ways in which women might influence public life despite restraints placed on them; what the characteristics of the good woman were; how one might evaluate whether Roman women were happy; how this description of Roman women compares with Balsdon's description of aristocratic Roman men.

Women did not vote, did not serve as iudices, 1 were not senators or magistrates or holders of major priesthoods. They did not, as a rule, speak in the courts.... As a rule, women took no part in public life, except on the rare occasions when they were angry enough to demonstrate, which was startling and shocking. . .  .

Women might, then, have considerable influence and interests outside their homes and families, but they were acting from within their families to affect a social system managed by men: their influence was not to be publicly acknowledged. Why were women excluded from public life? The division between arms-bearers and child-bearers was doubtless one historical cause, but the reasons publicly given were different. Women were alleged to be fragile and fickle, and therefore in need of protection; if they were not kept in their proper place they would (fragility and fickleness notwithstanding) take over. As the elder Cato . . . said . . .  :

'Our ancestors decided that women should not handle anything, even a private matter, without the advice of a guardian; that they should always be in the power of fathers, brothers, husbands.... Call to mind all those laws on women by which your ancestors restrained their licence and made them subject to men: you can only just keep them under by using the whole range of laws. If you let them niggle away at one law after another until they have worked it out of your grasp, until at last you let them make themselves equal to men, do you suppose that you'll be able to stand them? If once they get equality, they'll be on top.' . . .

A social system which restricted women to domestic life, and prevailing attitudes which assumed their inferiority, must seem to us oppressive. I know of no evidence that it seemed so at the time. The legal and social constraints detailed above may have frustrated the abilities of many women and caused much ordinary human unhappiness. But there evidently were, also, many ordinarily happy families where knowledge of real live women took precedence over the theories, and women themselves enjoyed home, children, and friends. There were some women who enjoyed the political game, and who found an emotional life outside their necessary marriages. And there were certainly women who found satisfaction in living up to the standards of the time. They were, as they should be, chaste, dutiful, submissive, and domestic; they took pride in the family of their birth and the family they had produced; and probably their resolution to maintain these standards gave them the support which women in all ages have found in religious faith. But the religious feelings of Roman women, as opposed to the acts of worship in which they might take part, are something of which we know very little . . .  .

The son of Murdia, in the age of Augustus, made her a public eulogy ... [which] may make the best epitaph for the women who did not make the history books.

'What is said in praise of all good women is the same, and straightforward. There is no need of elaborate phrases to tell of natural good qualities and of trust maintained. It is enough that all alike have the same reward: a good reputation. It is hard to find new things to praise in a woman, for their lives lack incident. We must look for what they have in common, lest something be left out to spoil the example they offer us. My beloved mother, then, deserves all the more praise, for in modesty, integrity, chastity, submission, woolwork, industry, and trustworthiness she was just like other women.'

Chapter Questions

1. Describe the circumstances, options, and everyday life of a Roman aristocrat during the first century B.C. as revealed in the documents in this chapter.

2. In what ways did Greeks, Greek culture, and Greek history affect Roman civilization?

3. Describe the similarities and differences between Greek and Roman civilizations. What were some of the main strengths and weaknesses of each?

The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity

With control in the hands of Augustus by 27 B.C., the Augustan Age began. A variety of reforms transformed the Republic into the Empire. Rome entered a period of expansion, prosperity, cultural vigor, and relative political stability that would last until the end of the second century. This was particularly so under the long rule of Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14) and the five "good emperors" (A.D. 96-180).

During this same period Christianity arose. Initially, it seemed only one of many religious sects and was perceived as a version of Judaism. But through the missionary work of Paul and the internal organization of the Church, Christianity spread and became institutionalized. During the fourth century it was recognized as the state religion within the Roman Empire.

By then enormous difficulties had been experienced within the Empire. Economic, political, and military problems were so great in the third century that the Empire shrank and nearly collapsed. A revival under the strong leadership of Diocletian and Constantine during the late third and early fourth centuries proved only temporary. By the end of the fourth century, the Empire was split into a Western and an Eastern half. The West was increasingly rural, subject to invasion, and generally in decline; the East evolved into the long-lasting Byzantine Empire. By the end of the fifth century, a unified, effective Western Empire was little more than a memory.

The selections in this chapter deal with three topics. The first concerns the general nature of the Empire at its height. During this time those who predominated were the politically active Roman "gentlemen." What was their lifestyle? What were their interests? How did they relate to Classical culture? These same questions apply to some of the Roman emperors, like Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher. The documents also deal with broader questions. How was the transition from the Republic to the Empire made and what role did Augustus play in this transition? What were the connections between Roman society, culture, and religion?

The second topic is Christianity. Why was Christianity so appealing, particularly to Roman women? What explains the success of this religious movement? How did Christianity relate to Roman civilization? How did Christian theology relate to Classical philosophy?

The third topic is the decline and fall of Rome, a problem of continuing interest to historians. Some of the primary documents explore reactions to the fall. The secondary documents offer interpretations of the fall. Here the need to distinguish the Western from the Eastern Roman Empire during the decline and fall is stressed. This topic will take us up to the rise of new civilizations in lands once controlled by Rome; this will be covered in the next chapter.

The Roman Empire:

The Place of Augustus

Chester G. Starr

With the rise of power of Augustus, the Republic came to an end and the Empire began. Under the long rule of Augustus, patterns were established that would endure well beyond his death in A.D. 14. During his own time Augustus was a controversial person, and ever since scholars have tried to evaluate the man and his rule. In the following selection Chester Starr, a historian at the University of Michigan, analyzes some of the controversies over the place of Augustus in Roman history, here emphasizing his successes in the political and military fields.

Consider: The ways in which Augustus might be considered a success; how other writers and scholars might disagree with this evaluation.

The failure of Augustus' social reforms throws into more vivid light his remarkable success in the political and military fields. Working patiently decade after decade Augustus gave the Roman world a sense of internal security based on a consciously elaborated pattern of government which embodied two principles. First came his own preeminence, and as we have seen in regard to coinage and architecture he was not bashful in stressing his own merits and achievements; no less than 150 statues and busts of the first emperor also survive. The second was his emphasis on outward cooperation with the Roman aristocracy, clothed in old constitutional forms; one may also add that on the local level Augustus, to ensure urban peace, favored the dominance of the rich and wellborn as against democracy. In sum, Augustus' reforms were essentially conservative in character....

Modern historians have evaluated Augustus in many divers ways, but until recently have tended to treat him with respect, partly because of the great triumphs of literature in the "Augustan Age." Of late, however, scholars affected by the overtly arbitrary character of government in some contemporary states have approached Augustus, as the founder of a covertly arbitrary system, with little admiration....

Certainly he was revered with great and genuine enthusiasm by his contemporaries both in Rome and in the provinces. In rising to the foreground as a single, unique figure Augustus had concentrated upon himself the yearnings of men for order. To this leader, more as symbol than as living creature, the subjects turned for assurance and prosperity in the material world, for a sense of security and purpose on the spiritual level....

In sum Augustus steered the Empire along lines which it was to follow for centuries to come, both in its strengths and in its weaknesses; the latter often the consequence of artful compromise with the Republican past. When men of later generations looked back on Augustus, they tended to have mixed emotions. His memory among common folk stood high, and the great events of his reign were long coin inmemorateden-lorated by coins, calendars, and both public and court rites and festivals. Writers of aristocratic stamp from Seneca the Elder on accepted him as inevitable and necessary to stop the Roil-Ian revolution; yet these writers rejected almost unanimously his claim that he had restored the Republic. To them the Empire was an autocratic system, and Augustus was the first autocrat. If Augustus could have heard the voices of future generations as he lay on his deathbed and begged for the applause of the bystanders, his self-satisfaction might have been diminished.

Pagan and Christian:

The Appeal of Christianity

E. R. Dodds

The beginnings of Christianity coincided with the establishment of the Empire under Augustus and the early emperors who succeeded hint. Numerous attempts have been made to analyze Jesus and the rise of Christianity. In the following selection E. R. Dodds views early Christianity froln a historical perspective. He focuses on the appeal of Christianity and how it compares with other religions of that period.

Consider: Typical traits Of' mystery religions and how Christianity differed from other mystery religions; other factors that might help explain the rise of Christianity iii this early period.

In the first place, its very exclusiveness, its refusal to concede any value to alternative forms of worship, which nowadays is often felt to be a weakness, was in the circumstances of the time a source of strength. The religious tolerance which was the normal Greek and Roman practice had resulted by accumulation in a bewildering mass of alternatives. There were too many cults, too many mysteries, too many philosophies of life to choose from: you could pile one religious insurance on another, yet not feel safe. Christianity made a clean sweep. It lifted the burden of freedom from the shoulders of the individual: one choice, one irrevocable choice, and the road to salvation was clear. . .  .

Secondly, Christianity was open to all. In principle, it made no social distinctions; it accepted the manual worker, the slave, the outcast, the ex-criminal; and though in the course of our period it developed a strong hierarchic structure, its hierarchy offered an open career to talent. Above all, it did not, like Neoplatonism, demand education . . .  .

Thirdly, in a period when earthly life was increasingly devalued and guilt-feelings were widely prevalent, Christianity held out to the disinherited the conditional promise

of a better inheritance in another world. So did several of its pagan rivals. But Christianity wielded both a bigger stick and a juicier carrot. It was accused of being a religion of fear, and such it no doubt was in the hands of the rigorists. But it was also a religion of lively hope. . .  .

But lastly, the benefits of becoming a Christian were not confined to the next world. A Christian congregation was from the first a community in a much fuller sense than any corresponding group of Isiac or Mithraist devotees. Its members were bound together not only by common rites but by a common way of life and, as Celsus shrewdly perceived, by their common danger. Their promptitude in bringing material help to brethren in captivity or other distress is attested not only by Christian writers but by Lucian, a far from sympathetic witness. Love of one's neighbour is not an exclusively Christian virtue, but in our period the Christians appear to have practised it much more effectively than any other group. The Church provided the essentials of social security: it cared for widows and orphans, the old, the unemployed, and the disabled; it provided a burial fund for the poor and a nursing service in time of plague. But even more important, I suspect, than these material benefits was the sense of belonging which the Christian community could give. Modern social studies have brought home to us the universality of the 'need to belong' and the unexpected ways in which it can influence human behaviour, particularly among the rootless inhabitants of great cities. I see no reason to think that it was otherwise in antiquity: Epictetus has described for us the dreadful loneliness that can beset a man in the midst of his fellows. Such loneliness must have been felt by millions-the urbanised tribesman, the peasant come to town in search of work, the demobilised soldier, the rentier ruined by inflation, and the manumitted slave. For people in that situation membership of a Christian community might be the only way of maintaining their self-respect and giving their life some semblance of meaning. Within the community there was human warmth: some one was interested in them, both here and hereafter. It is therefore not surprising that the earliest and the most striking advances of Christianity were made in the great cities-in Antioch, in Rome, in Alexandria. Christians were in a more than formal sense members one of another.  I think that was a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause, of the spread of Christianity.

Women of the Roman Empire

Jo Ann McNamara

Roman women, like Greek women, were usually in a subordinate position to men. Rome was and would remain a patriarchy. However, during the Empire and particularly as Christianity grew in importance, women's roles evolved. In the following selection Jo Ann McNamara stresses how women were able to use their family roles and religion to gain new power and choices.

Consider: Why Christianity may have been so attractive to women; how Christianity played a role in improving women's power and status.

The Roman Republic was a patriarchy in the strictest sense of the word. Private life rested upon patria potestas, paternal power over the subordinate women, children, slaves, and clients who formed the Roman Familia. The Roman matron was highly respected within limits established by a strong gender system that defined her role as the supporter of the patriarch's power. Public life was conducted in the name of the Senate and People of Rome, institutionally defined as exclusively male. In the last days of the Republic, the power of these institutions was destroyed by civil war at the same time that the army, led by its emperors (originally only a military title), carried the standards of Rome to victory over the many civilizations of the Mediterranean world and ultimately took power over the city of Rome itself.

Under the Empire, the boundaries between public and private lives became porous and women began to use their familial roles as instruments of public power. Religion, in particular, offered women a bridge across class and gender differences, from private to public life. Roman women experimented widely with a variety of pagan cults, but increasingly Christianity attracted women with a vision of a community where in Christ "There is neither Jew nor Greek, ... neither bond nor free, ... neither male nor female." (Galatians 3:28)

Christianity was founded at about the same time as the Roman Empire was established, and for the next three centuries the imperial government and the Christian religion developed on separate but converging tracks. As an outlawed sect, the new religion was peculiarly susceptible to the influence of wealthy and noble women. Their participation was so energetic and prominent that critics often labeled Christianity a religion of women and slaves. In the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Empire had become Christian, it consolidated new political and religious hierarchies which reinforced one another. The synthesis was basically a restructured patriarchy with Christian men firmly in control of both government and church. But Roman Law and Roman Christianity contained a wider range of choices for women regarding marriage and property which passed into the hands of Rome's European successors.

The Later Roman Empire

A. H. M. Jones

Most historians who interpret the decline and fall of the Roman Empire focus on the Western half of the Empire. In fact, the Eastern half did not fall and would not, despite some ups and downs, for another thousand years. A. H. M. Jones, a distinguished British scholar of Greece and Rome, has emphasized the significance of the Eastern Empire's different fate for analyzing the decline

and fall of the Western Empire. In the following selection Jones compares conditions in the two halves of the Empire, criticizing those who have theorized that the fall in the West stemmed from long-term internal weaknesses.

Consider: The primary cause for the collapse in the West according to Jones; other possible causes for the collapse in the West.

All the historians who have discussed the decline and fall of the Roman empire have been Westerners. Their eyes have been fixed on the collapse of Roman authority in the Western parts and the evolution of the medieval Western European world. They have tended to forget, or to brush aside, one very important fact, that the Roman empire, though it may have declined, did not fall in the fifth century nor indeed for another thousand years. During the fifth century, while the Western parts were being parcelled out into a group of barbarian kingdoms, the empire of the East stood its ground. In the sixth it counter- attacked and reconquered Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths, and part of Spain from the Visigoths. Before the end of the century, it is true, much of Italy and Spain had succumbed to renewed barbarian attacks, and in the seventh the onslaught of the Arabs robbed the empire of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, and the Slavs overran the Balkans. But in Asia Minor the empire lived on, and later, recovering its strength, reconquered much territory that it had lost in the dark days of the seventh century.

These facts are important, for they demonstrate that the empire did not, as some modern historians have suggested, totter into its grave from senile decay, impelled by a gentle push from the barbarians. Most of the internal weaknesses which these historians stress were common to both halves of the empire. The East was even more Christian than the West, its theological disputes far more embittered. The East, like the West, was administered by a corrupt and extortionate bureaucracy. The Eastern government strove as hard to enforce a rigid caste system, tying the curiales to their cities and the coloni to the soil. Land fell out of cultivation and was deserted in the East as well as in the West. It may be that some of these weaknesses were more accentuated in the West than in the East, but this is a question which needs investigation. It may be also that the initial strength of the Eastern empire in wealth and population was greater, and that it could afford more wastage; but this again must be demonstrated....

The East then probably possessed greater economic resources, and could thus support with less strain a larger number of idle mouths. A smaller part of its resources went, it would seem, to maintain its aristocracy, and more was thus available for the army and other essential services. It also was probably more populous, and since the economic pressure on the peasantry was perhaps less severe, may have suffered less from population decline. If there is any substance in these arguments, the Eastern government should have been able to raise a larger revenue without overstraining its resources, and to levy more troops without depleting its labour force....

The Western empire was poorer and less populous, and its social and economic structure more unhealthy. It was thus less able to withstand the tremendous strains imposed by its defense effort, and the internal weaknesses which it developed undoubtedly contributed to its final collapse in the fifth century. But the major cause of its fall was that it

was more exposed to barbarian onslaughts which in persistence and sheer weight of numbers far exceeded anything which the empire had previously had to face. The Eastern empire, owing to its greater wealth and population and sounder economy, was better able to carry the burden of defence, but its resources were overstrained and it developed the same weaknesses as the West, if perhaps in a less acute form. Despite these weaknesses it managed in the sixth century not only to hold its own against the Persians in the East but to reconquer parts of the West, and even when, in the seventh century, it was overrun by the onslaughts of the Persians and the Arabs and the Slavs, it succeeded despite heavy territorial losses in rallying and holding its own. The internal weaknesses of the empire cannot have been a major factor in its decline.

Chapter Questions

1. What are the similarities and differences between Roman and Christian rules of conduct and ethics?

2. What traits of Classical culture and civilization do you find most admirable? Are these also traits of Christianity?

3. In what ways were conditions of Roman civilization conducive to the growth of Christianity? In what ways was Christianity nevertheless contradictory to Roman civilization?

4. How might the very success of the Roman Empire be related to its decline?